


Saccadic Blinding

by orphan_account



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Dreams vs. Reality, F/M, Flashbacks, Lightly implied autistic Jon, M/M, Sensory Overload
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-16 18:08:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16500218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Georgie and Martin bond in Jon's hospital room.





	Saccadic Blinding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jain/gifts).



> Thanks to the usual crowd: Kyros, lontradiction, Zomburai, and tea.

            _“What the fuck are you doing?”_

_Jolt of adrenaline to the stomach. Jon looked up, his finger still automatically holding his place between the pages. “I—I was just—”_

“Oh, sorry.” The man entering the hospital room was staring so hard at his feet that he’d nearly plowed directly over Georgie, who stepped back irritably, but looking at his face, she paused. It was scrunched up in the purest expression of misery she thought she’d ever seen.

            “You’re here to see Jon, aren’t you?” she asked quietly.

            “Oh! Um. Yes. I didn’t realize anyone else would be here.”

            “I was just leaving,” Georgie said, glancing back over her shoulder at the still figure in the bed. She paused. “I’m Georgie Barker.”           

            Small half-smile. “Martin Blackwood, nice to meet you. Jon’s said a bit about you.” He put out a hand for her to shake, and she took it. She liked the look of Martin, the worried stoop of the shoulders and the set of the corner of his mouth, which suggested more stubbornness than she suspected he let most people see. “How is he?” he asked, glancing behind her, and Georgie felt her own mouth draw down.

            “No different,” she said quietly.

            “Right,” Martin said, squaring his shoulders. “Well. I brought a few books I hope he hasn’t read. I won’t keep you.”

            “I’ll probably see you around.”

            “Yeah.”

            She paused in the doorway, watching as Martin took a seat beside Jon and very, very gently lifted his hand, pressing it to his cheek, shutting his eyes. Georgie slipped out then, letting the door shut quietly behind her. She didn’t need to intrude on that intimacy.

~

_He knew he shouldn’t look. But it was right there, sitting on the desk, the key next to it. He shouldn’t look. Jon glanced around, assured himself that room and flat were empty, and reached for the key with trembling hands. Just to get a little perspective, he told himself. He just wanted a little perspective_.

            “When at last the friendly darkness of her chamber folded her about with its cooling and consoling arms, she threw herself on her bed and fell fast asleep. And there she slept on, one alive in a tomb, while Photogen, above in the sun-glory, pursued the buffaloes on the lofty plain, thinking not once of her where she lay dark and forsaken, whose presence had been his refuge, her eyes and her hands his guardians through the night. He was in his glory and his pride; and the darkness and its disgrace had vanished for a time [1].”

            Georgie paused in the doorway. Martin was sitting beside Jon’s unresponsive form, reading to him quietly from an illustrated hardcover book. From here, Georgie could just make out the black and white illustration of a dark-haired girl lying collapsed on a bed.

            As he finished reading, Martin took a leather bookmark from further along in the book and slid it into his current place, closed the book, looked up, and saw her. “Oh, hi, Georgie,” he said. “D’you want me to leave?”

            She shook her head, entering the room. “You can stay as long as you want. Is it all right if I join you?”

            “Oh, yeah, go ahead.” Martin sighed. “I’m on leave,” he said abruptly. “Sort of forced leave, I guess. I tried to go into work, and my current boss popped downstairs right away and shooed me back out. So I came here.”

            Georgie looked from Martin to Jon’s still face and back. She probably ought to be tactful, but she was tired and not sure how to be, so instead she said, “Melanie says you’re head over heels for him.”

            A slow flush crept across Martin’s cheeks and up the back of his neck, but he said, a little sharply, “Yeah. So what?”

            She crossed the room and sat down across from him. “He’s a mess,” she said, rather fondly. “Aren’t you? Nerd.” She reached out one hand to ruffle Jon’s hair carefully, trying to ignore the icy coldness of his skin.

            “A total mess,” Martin agreed. “He keeps trying to push everybody away—”

            “He’s always done that,” Georgie agreed. “He thinks he has to do everything himself. He sticks his nose everywhere it won’t belong, if you get angry at him, he thinks it’s the end of the world and he doesn’t deserve to exist in your presence anymore, and he has absolutely no idea how to form the concept that emotions won’t last forever.”

            Martin sniffed and smiled. “He’s stupidly brave,” he said. “And incredibly intelligent. And, yeah. I’m—I really love him. I don’t think he has a clue.”

            Shifting in her seat, Georgie sighed. “I wonder,” she said, softly. “He might just think it’s safer for you if he doesn’t.”

            Martin groaned and set his book down, reaching out for Jon’s hand. “He would,” he said. “He _absolutely_ would.” He looked down at the way Jon’s eyes still flickered rapidly behind their lids. “I wonder what he’s dreaming about?”

~

_“What the fuck are you doing?”_

_Jolt of adrenaline to the stomach. Jon looked up, his finger still automatically holding his place between the pages. “I—I was just—”_

_“That’s my_ diary _! You were reading my_ diary _!” Georgie’s voice had climbed a register in shock._

_“No,” Jon protested, and she barked out a laugh._

_“You literally still have it open, and you’ve left a curry smear on the lefthand page.” She threw her hands into the air. “What the hell, Jon?”_

_Guilt twisted inside his stomach. “I just—I wanted to know what I should be_ doing _, all right?”_

_“What do you mean, what you should be ‘doing’?”_

_He pressed his knuckles into his forehead. “Nothing I do is right, all right, Georgie, I get that, I just don’t know_ why _, and I thought—”_

_“What do you mean nothing you do is right? I have no idea what you’re talking about, Jon.”_

_He counted on his fingers. “I tried to get you flowers, and you said, ‘that’s nice, Jon, but you don’t really need to bother.’ I tried taking you out to a movie, and you said, ‘not this week, Jon, I have to study for an exam.’ I tried staying over here, or inviting you to stay at my flat, but you didn’t want me to. I don’t—I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do!”_

            _“You’re not supposed to_ do _anything, Jon, other than, you know,_ not _invade my privacy?”_

_“We’re dating,” Jon said. “Right? I thought? But I don’t know_ how _, Georgie.”_

_“What d’you mean you don’t know how? There’s no magical way to do it, you just, you know,_ do _it.”_

_Jon’s heart was thudding unpleasantly in his ears, and for some reason he could hear the dripping of the faucet in the next room, the whirring of the ceiling fan, and the rustle of cloth as Georgie worked one hand nervously in the hem of her t-shirt. It was too much; it hurt. He wanted to press his hands into his ears; he wanted to get away. But he knew he shouldn’t have; he’d known that since he touched the book on the desk. He deserved the feeling of being flayed open, the way the sounds rose and rose like a crescendo in his ears._

“As she leaned the lamp over to have a better view of his face, a drop of burning oil fell on the shoulder of the god. Startled, he opened his eyes and fixed them upon her. Then, without saying a word, he spread his white wings and flew out of the window. Psyche, in vain endeavoring to follow him, fell from the window to the ground.

            “Cupid, beholding her as she lay in the dust, stopped his flight for an instant and said, ‘Oh foolish Psyche, is it thus you repay my love? After I disobeyed my mother's commands and made you my wife, will you think me a monster and cut off my head? But go; return to your sisters, whose advice you seem to think preferable to mine. I inflict no other punishment on you than to leave you for ever. Love cannot dwell with suspicion.’ So saying, he fled away, leaving poor Psyche prostrate on the ground, filling the place with mournful lamentations [2].”

            “How are you picking what you read to him?” Georgie asked, leaning forward. Martin ran a thumb over his lower lip and nibbled at the knuckle.

            “I don’t know, exactly. I know he prefers things he hasn’t read, and for some reason, I kind of expect he hasn’t read many fairy-tale-ish things, but also I guess I’m just picking stuff I like, too.”

            They lapsed into silence at that. It was difficult, watching Jon’s eyes sliding back and forth like the platen of a typewriter skidding ceaselessly back and forth as someone typed a continuous narrative but without any other indication of life or consciousness.

            “I read a paper where they compared REM to saccades,” Martin said, after a moment. “There wasn’t much difference, actually [3]. It’s—it’s like he’s so close, but there’s—” He swallowed.

            “Saccades?” Georgie asked.

            “Oh, um. The way your eyes move when you’re awake, basically, if you’re looking at a picture, I think, instead of following something that’s moving? It’s a series of jerky little motions. Like, well, like that.” He pointed and sighed shakily. “I really wish I knew a way to—to _get_ to him.”

            “Yeah,” Georgie agreed softly. “Yeah.” She sighed and looked away. “I told him he needed anchors,” she murmured. “I don’t really know if he listened to me—if he was _going_ to listen to me.” She paused, checking her watch. “Damn, it’s getting late, and I don’t think I’ve eaten all day. Do you want to grab something with me?”

            Martin shuffled, glanced down at Jon, sighed. “Yeah, sure,” he said.

~

            “So,” he said, as Georgie tucked into a hot shepherd’s pie. “You seem like you’re pretty close to Jon, right?”

            “We’ve been friends a long time, yeah.”

            Martin chewed on his lip. “So how does that work, then? I mean, shit, this is probably going to sound really bad, but the way he talked, it sounded like you guys had a pretty bad breakup.”

            Georgie snorted into her drink and took a long swallow. “Operative phrase there is ‘the way he talked,’” she said, pulling a wry grin. “I love Jon, I do, but he has no sense of scale. I mean—the breakup was a bit weird, because I was pissed, but probably not pissed enough to break it off, and Jon just, well, pretty much vanished for three months or so. The only reason I knew he wasn’t dead was because I kept seeing him around, and then he’d notice me and run off somewhere to hide.”

            “He can be, um, dramatic,” Martin agreed, with a rueful laugh. “And he’s _really_ not good at being aware that people actually care about him.”

            “Yep,” Georgie agreed, taking another swig of her beer. “God, I want to get drunk. I probably shouldn’t.”

            “I probably shouldn’t encourage you,” Martin said, with a rueful smile. “But honestly I’d rather not be totally sober right now either.”

            Georgie held up her pint glass. “Bottoms up, then, why not?”

~

            It probably said something about Georgie and maybe about Martin, too, that after they’d gotten thoroughly sloshed, they stopped at a park to feed the ducks and then at a bookstore, where Martin beelined straight for the children’s section and joyfully sat down with a book of illustrated fairytales. “I used to volunteer at the library,” he confessed. “I mean, when I was in primary school—it was a while ago? But I used to read them out loud, so I guess, I mean, the thing where I read out loud to Jon is something I’m used to. Something I’m good at.” He paused, then shrugged. “I like fairytales way too much.”

            “Can you really like fairytales too much?”

            Martin blinked up at her. “I don’t know,” he said, in the wondering tone of someone trying to grapple with an idea that was a little more complex than their current state of mind was really suited for.

            “Let’s go read to Jon a little more,” Georgie said impulsively, a weird idea spawning out of the fizziness of her brain. “Okay? This book’s got all the standards, right?”

            “I—I guess so.” Martin gave her a weird look.

            “Come on, then.”

            They were in such a rush that they nearly forgot to pay for the book, but luckily for their reputations, the shop girl called out to them, and even more luckily, Martin had a ten-pound note in his hand, so they were able to escape with a minimum of embarrassment.

            When they got back to Jon’s room, Georgie took the book, flipped through it, and handed it to Martin. “Go on,” she said, when he gave her a flat look.

            “Really?” he said doubtfully. “I mean…I like it, but…I don’t know. I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

            “Just give it a try?” she suggested. “Look, we’ve established that Jon is ridiculously overdramatic sometimes. Maybe we can get it to work in our favor for a change.”

            Martin sighed. “I guess there’s no point not trying.” He took the book into his hands, settled back in his chair, and began to read, while Georgie settled back into the other chair and tried to look more confident than she felt.

~

            “At last the prince came to a chamber of gold, where he saw upon a bed the fairest sight one ever beheld—a princess of about seventeen years who looked as if she had just fallen asleep. Trembling, the prince knelt beside her, and awakened her with a kiss. And now the enchantment was broken.

            “The princess looked at him with wondering eyes and said: ‘Is it you, my prince? I have waited for you long [4].’”

            Jon’s eyes were still flickering backward and forward in their approximation of saccadic motion. Georgie looked at Martin and gave him a meaningful look.

            “It’s not going to _work_ ,” Martin’s voice came out in a pleading sob. “I mean, look, even if—even if he did—it wouldn’t be _me_. You should try.”

            She laughed and shook her head. “No, I shouldn’t, Martin.”

            “What if he doesn’t want me to?” Martin slouched lower in his seat, but his eyes kept flicking back to Jon’s pale face. “What if—” He bit his lip. “It’s a bit selfish, isn’t it?”

            “Probably,” Georgie agreed. “But, look, Martin. Jon’s thick, you know he is; what if he doesn’t even know how you feel? You’re, you know, giving him information.”

            That seemed to have been the right thing to say, because Martin’s eyebrows drew down thoughtfully, and then he nodded. “Yeah, I suppose. Right. Fine. Here goes.” He leaned forward intently, paused for an instant to gulp in a nervous breath, and pressed his lips to Jon’s, remaining in that position for just a moment before he pulled back.

~

_“We’re dating,” Jon said. “Right? I thought? But I don’t know_ how _, Georgie.”_

_“What d’you mean you don’t know how? There’s no magical way to do it, you just, you know,_ do _it.”_

_Just do it. Because like everything else, it was just something he should know how to do. Everything had gotten very loud, and Jon could hear Georgie’s breathing rising from an angry susurration to a howling gale. He wanted to press his hands to his ears. He wanted to hide, somewhere small and dark and silent. He wanted to know what he was supposed to_ do _. What did she want from him? What did anyone—_

_“At last the prince came to a chamber of gold, where he saw upon a bed the fairest sight one ever beheld—a princess of about seventeen years who looked as if she had just fallen asleep. Trembling, the prince knelt beside her, and awakened her with a kiss. And now the enchantment was broken._

_“The princess looked at him with wondering eyes and said: ‘Is it you, my prince? I have waited for you long.’”_

_The words all seemed to arrive at once, along with the very definite sensation of a clumsy kiss on Jon’s lips. There was no sequence of events, just a sharp shudder of the scene from one set of inputs to another. And Georgie’s voice murmuring, “Please wake up, Jon, that’s all I want from you.”_

_He frowned. Wake up? It didn’t seem to be a request that had much to do with their current argument, but it was simple. At least there was that. If he was dreaming—Jon thought about this. He should open his eyes; they must be shut. And if he paid attention to the way the lips on his had felt, he thought he could also feel the sensation of his eyes being shut firmly._

_Georgie was saying something else, but he ignored it, straining to lift lids that suddenly felt as if they weighed a hundred pounds. Couldn’t even manage this, could he? Was he really going to fail at this as well? Just wake up. Just open your damn eyes._

_Open your eyes. Witness._ See.

            Bright light speared down into Jon’s face, and pain splintered through his head.

            “I told you it wouldn’t—” The words arrived at Jon’s ears from the same place the kiss had, which meant—which meant—

            “Martin?” Jon asked, though his numb lips tried to fight him. “Is that…” His eyes were trying to close again, the dream Georgie still waiting for him, implacable and unsatisfiable.

            “Oh, my god.” Hands around his hands; he could see Martin now, light wavy hair flopping forward into his own eyes, and he squinted, his eyes fluttering, trying to keep himself here. Trying—

            “I—can’t stay awake—” he gritted out.

            “ _Try_ ,” Martin said urgently, and then there was another face bending across him as well, the concern obvious in her face.

            “Jon,” Georgie said. “Stay here. Please? For us?”

            It _hurt_. It hurt, and it was more effort than Jon thought he’d put into anything before, but he resisted the dark pull of sleep at the back of his brain, felt fingers against his fingers, clenched his own hand against them. Clenched, _pushed_ , and suddenly he was rolling onto his side, coughing and gasping and shuddering, but the drag was gone, as if a string had been cut. Slowly, shakily, he pushed himself up into a sitting position and squinted at his two friends.

            “Martin,” he managed slowly. “You…kissed me?”

            Martin was flushing and gnawing on his bottom lip. “Uh, yeah. I did.”

            “Do it again?”

 

[1] _The Day Boy and the Night Girl_ , by George MacDonald

[2] Thomas Bulfinch,  _The Age of Fable; or, Stories of Gods and Heroes_ , 3rd edition (Boston: Sanborn, Carter, Bazin and Company, 1855), ch. 11, pp. 115-28.

[3] Andrillon, Thomas, et al. "Single-neuron activity and eye movements during human REM sleep and awake vision."  _Nature communications_  6 (2015): 7884.

[4] Withers, S., Browne, H. S., Tate, W.K. (1917).  _The Child's World Third Reader._ New York: Johnson Publishing Company.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I did cite a Nat. Comm. paper in this.
> 
> Yes, I am a tremendous nerd.


End file.
